Roundup: Talking About History

Susan Ware: Women and the Great Depression

[From 1997-2005 Susan Ware served as editor of volume five of the biographical dictionary Notable American Women at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Her research interests include twentieth-century American history and the history of American women, as well as biography. She has published books on women in the New Deal and the 1930s; biographies of Molly Dewson, Amelia Earhart, and Mary Margaret McBride; and a women's history anthology.] In 1933 Eleano

Anthony Badger: The Hundred Days and Beyond ... What did the New Deal Accomplish?

[Anthony Badger is Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge University and Master of Clare College. He is the author of a number of books, most recently FDR: The First Hundred Days (Hill and Wang, 2008).] The Hundred Days were an accident. Roosevelt took advantage of the need to reopen the banks to ask Congress to stay in session to pass recovery and reform legislation. Much of that legislation was improvised. The haste dictated by the economic crisis profoundly shaped

Nick Taylor: The WPA: Antidote to the Great Depression?

[Nick Taylor is an independent scholar and the author of American Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work (Bantam, 2008).] When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933, estimates of the number of jobless workers in the United States ranged from thirteen million to as high as fifteen million – a quarter of the working population. Every class of worker was affected: laborers, factory workers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, secretari

David M. Kennedy: The Great Depression: An Overview

[David M. Kennedy is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, at Stanford University and author of many books on American history, most recently, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1999). ] Herbert Hoover got many things wrong about the great economic calamity that destroyed his presidency and his historical reputation, but he got one fundamental thing right. Much legend to the contrary, the Great Depression w

George White Jr.: The Congo's tragic story

[George White, jr. is an Assistant Professor of History at York College, CUNY. He is the author of the book Holding the Line: Race, Racism, and American Foreign Policy Toward Africa, 1953-1961 and the article “Little Wheel Blues: John Lee Hooker, the Eisenhower Administration and African Decolonization” in the French interdisciplinary journal Cercles.] These words are difficult to write. Fifty years ago, the people of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo drifted in a purgato

Robert Mackey: An army is a grand exercise in group loyalty and cooperation. Understanding what holds it together provides lessons beyond the military.

The American Civil War has long been a staple of the publishing industry. Hundreds of books come out each year, ranging from yet another biography of Robert E. Lee to "drums and bugles" hard-core military histories of specific battles and campaigns. Very few break new ground or bring to light any new discoveries, and even fewer have any relevance beyond the four years of fratricidal homicide. Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn's Heroes and Cowards is a rarity -- a book about the Civil W

Robert McHenry: Encarta, R.I.P.

In the wake of the news that Encarta, Microsoft’s electronic encyclopedia, is to be euthanized, the question of the day seems to be, Is Wikipedia to be blamed or thanked?This assumes that Wikipedia had anything to do with it, an assumption that many observers and futurepundits are very, very eager to make.In the comments a fellow name

Oliver Kamm: Wikipedia's nonsense

In conception and characteristics, Wikipedia is distinctively a creature of the internet: vast, sprawling and of dramatically variable quality. It is also, by design, an anti-intellectual project. Wikipedia recognises no intrinsic value in competence or knowledge; its guiding principle is agreement rather than truth. Intellectual inquiry involves testing ideas against the canons of evidence. Wikipedia's 'community' offers members a different route to recognition - one shorn of the burden of earn

Jason Maoz: Ike and Israel

[Jason Maoz is the senior editor of The Jewish Press. Jason Maoz can be reached at jmaoz@jewishpress.com.] Much has been written in recent weeks of the Obama administration's possible tilt toward a more evenhanded U.S. Middle East policy. Contrary to popular perception, however, if such a change were indeed implemented, it would constitute not so much a new and revolutionary approach as it would an old and reactionary one.

Suzannah Lipscomb: The truth behind Henry VIII's reign

We all think we know Henry VIII (r. 1509-47) and all there is to know about him. The Holbein portraits, the profusion of television dramas and films, the novels and histories set in his world make him ubiquitous. A whole set of clichés, truisms and fallacies accompany that famous silhouette. As a character, the king both repulses and fascinates us. His vast girth, larger than life persona, grandeur, pomp, arrogance and appetites make us strangely proud of this hyper-masculine, fabled monarch

Jeff Madrick: Was the New Deal a Bust?

[Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.] Nothing better illustrates the tenacity of the political right in America than the attentio

Errol Morris: Whose Father Was He? (Part One)

[Errol Morris is a filmmaker whose movie "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara" won the Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2004.] The soldier’s body was found near the center of Gettysburg with no identification — no regimental numbers on his cap, no corps badge on his jacket, no letters, no diary. Nothing save for an ambrotype (an early type of photograph popular in the late 1850’s and 1860’s) of three small children clutched in hi

Will Kinmount: Is David Starkey the reincarnation of Henry VIII?

[Will Kinmount writes for the Telegraph.] The more you read about David Starkey and his latest subject, Henry VIII, the more you start to wonder: are they related? Is there some kind of morphic resonance between biographer and subject? Could reincarnation be at work here? Because in so many ways, David Starkey could actually be Henry VIII. Consider the similarities. While researching his new book and Channel 4 TV series on the Tudor king – all neatly timed to coincide

Bob Thompson: Profile of James Mann, author of a new book on Reagan

James Mann got interested in writing about Ronald Reagan when he discovered that, while Reagan was president, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld used to sneak off to undisclosed locations to prepare for Armageddon. A longtime Los Angeles Times reporter, Mann left the paper in 2001 to write books full time. First up was "Rise of the Vulcans," a historical portrait of President George W. Bush's foreign policy team. Mann spent a couple of years asking Washington notables what th

Daniel Pipes: Palestinians Who Helped Create Israel

Palestinians have so loudly and for so long (nearly a century) rejected Zionism that Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Yasir Arafat, and Hamas may appear to command unanimous Palestinian support.But no: polling research finds that a substantial minority of Palestinians, about 20 percent, is ready to live side-by-side with a sovereign Jewish state. Although this minority has never been in charge and its voice has always been buried under r

Jehan Sadat: The Lessons of Camp David ... What Anwar Sadat can teach us about peace

[Ms. Sadat, a fellow at the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, is the author of "A Woman of Egypt" (Simon and Schuster, 1987) and "My Hope for Peace" (Free Press, 2009).] Thirty years ago today, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Camp David Peace Accords. It was a culmination of a journey Anwar Sadat, my husband, began in October 1970 following the sudden death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Jeffrey Lord: The 1966 Election's Warning to Obama

[Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author.] It was a historic tidal wave of rejection. Symbolized by, of all things, housewives boycotting supermarkets. And the active participation of seven future presidents of the United States. The 1966 "off year" or congressional elections should also serve as a political warning to the Obama White House as it pursues its strategy of pumping trillions of taxpayer dollars into the economy.

Jessica Pritchard: Women’s History Month

Beginning with International Women’s Day in 1911, progressing to Women’s History Week in 1981, and expanding to an entire month in 1987, Women’s History Month, celebrated every March, has come quite a ways over the last century.Compiled below is a list of a good number of web sites that highlight some of history’s most extraordinary women and give insight to their fight for gender equality.General Interest

Q & A with Stolen-Treasure Hunter Matthew Bogdanos

As the tanks rolled into Iraq in March, 2003, Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos and his counterterrorism team followed right behind. Tasked with investigating battle-related criminal activity, the team was soon redirected to Iraq's National Museum when news broke that priceless artifacts were being looted. They camped out in the museum for the remainder of his tour of duty, tallying the artifacts stolen and hunting down the thieves. It was, perhaps, serendipity or kismet, that Bogdanos, who holds

Peter Kupfer: The man who made the Wall Street Journal

[Peter Kupfer is a former editor on the National / Foreign desk at The San Francisco Chronicle. His freelance articles on the arts, travel and technology have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Asian Art News and other publications. He last wrote on The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America for Culturekiosque.com] At a moment in history when both Wall Street and the newspaper industry are undergoing upheavals that threaten their v